The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has once again sown doubts about the safety of vaccines by linking them again to autism. To support his stance, he has resorted to the argument that in 330 years there has been no documented case of autism among the Amish who reject vaccination.
"330 years later there is not a single explicitly documented case of an unvaccinated Amish child with autism," Trump has published on social media, insisting on his thesis that childhood immunization would be related to this developmental disorder.
In his message, the American leader refers to presentation 7336 of the International Autism Research Congress held in 2010. According to Trump's interpretation of that work, the document states that "autism has been documented in Amish children," but "there is no published and explicitly documented case of autism and zero vaccines." Despite the lack of precise statistics, it is estimated that the majority of Amish—around 400,000 people in the United States—reject vaccination programs.
On August 24, Trump had already predicted a decrease in the "epidemic" of autism, a disorder that he himself has repeatedly linked to vaccines. "You are going to witness a big difference in the autism rate, which is like an epidemic," he stated then during a public event held at the White House.
In that same speech, the president recommended that parents modify their children's vaccination schedule and space out the injections. He defended the idea of replacing a single dose with several smaller administrations, the so-called "small shots," a proposal that health authorities have consistently refuted, denying any connection between vaccines and autism.
"We strongly urge that when you get the doses for your little children, I think it has to do with preventing autism, you have to ask the doctor to give them five small doses instead of one large one," the mogul has explained, maintaining his recommendation despite the rejection from the scientific community.
In response to these claims, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States remind that "to date studies continue to show that vaccines are not related" to autism, supporting the safety of the vaccination schedules currently in force.